Second Day of Class

First Live Q&A with Bobby Beck (l), Shawn Kelly (r), and Carlos Baena (not visible).

So, you can imagine my surprise when this morning, I go to the AM site where I had posted the 3 poses I did late last night (see last entry) to see some comments made by passerbys - and one was from Bobby Beck!! He had this to say: LOVE THE POSES. THE HAAHAA YOUR FUNNY POSE INTHE FIRST SKETCHBOOK IMAGE IS REALLY REALLY NICE. GREAT WORK.

I was so stoked! Not that I ever want to rest on laurels...

Which reminds me of the first time I was given a stellar critique from an artist I respected. It was the painter/fantasy artist Jim Christensen, who was in his last year of teaching at BYU. He was a lot of the reason I went to that school. Anyhow, I was a freshman and he was one of my foundation art teachers (I think it was the Value Class - teaching the uses of darkness and light in art) and had invited me to sit in on his Advanced Figure Drawing Class for graduate students. Of course I accepted and was soon drawing alongside very accomplished artists for no credit, but I was grateful for the experience.

So one day, later on in the semester, I was in his office - can't remember why I went to chat, but he sat me down and said, "I think you've got what it takes to make it as a professional artist. You will be very successful. Do you think I invite just anybody to my Advanced Figure Class? Do you see any other freshmen there?" I shook my head no. I hadn't realized I had been singled out... "But!" he said, "If you don't give 100% every time, if you think 'Well, I'm better than 90 to 95% of the people in this class' and don't push yourself, you will fail."

It was a huge reality check for me. It was a "Spider-Man moment" (with great ability comes great responsibility kind of thing). And after his class, I promptly failed to apply his advice and kind of coasted with good, but not my best work in the next foundation class with another professor. Live and learn, right? (Even Spidey had his moments of personal floundering...)

So Jim, I'm taking your advice to heart. No more half-jobs.

Getting back to AM, there are still some technical glitches with the site. The screen cap above is from the first Global Live Q&A session with the Founders (the "3 Amigos" I call them). Bobby is the one making the face. The session lasted for about 5 minutes or so before it froze up and everybody freaked out "Where did they go??!! What's happening?? AAAGGHHHH!!!!"

Ah well, modern life (and other inconveniences)...